Free This Holey Life by Sophie Duffy Page A

The ache of elbow grease. My middle daughter absorbed in
wiping the floor grills with one of Steve’s old tshirts. I’ve missed her this week. She’s going out into the world. Rachel has already gone. The gap that’s been there for
six years has suddenly got bigger. Blacker. He comes back to me. His small perfect face. I want to lie down on the cold stone floor and weep for him. But I can’t do that. I am still a mother.
To the big girl at school. To the baby at home. To the little girl beside me who never even knew him though she has seen the photos. The handprints. The headstone in the churchyard. I reach for my
hanky instead.
    ‘It’s dusty in here, isn’t it?’ Olivia is kneeling up, like a cherub, smiling at me in her simple way. ‘Not everybody cleans as good as you and me, do they
Mummy?’
    ‘No, darling, they don’t all clean as well as us. You’re quite right.’ I take in her young, eager face. Her cheeks shiny from exertion. Her front tooth discoloured
from an accident involving the pushchair and the front step. One day that tooth will wobble and fall out and be put to rest inside the matchbox, in the biscuit tin, in the wardrobe. She will grow
up.
    ‘It’s all sparkly, Mummy, look,’ she indicates St Hilda’s with her little hand. She’d make a good estate agent. She’s good at spin.
    And actually it does look at its best. Light pushes its way in through the stained glass of St Hilda’s dress and spreads itself over the swept floor. The edge is rubbed off my grief and I
can let myself feel the quiet contentment of a job well done. A moment shared with my daughter. This daughter, here and now.
    ‘Shall we go to the cake shop on the way home and get something for tea?’
    ‘I’d rather have a Pot Noodle, Mummy.’
    While I am slicing up the Madeira cake for Olivia and Imo, the front door bangs open and someone falls through it. Jeremy. He crashes his way down the hall to the kitchen,
barges straight past me and the girls and is out the back door heading for the shed before I can ask how was school.
    Steve comes in a few seconds later, harassed, a grumpy Rachel in tow.
    ‘What’s up, Rach?’ I ask. ‘It’s Friday. You should be smiling.’
    ‘Smiling?’ she grunts, sending her bag skidding across the table so it knocks Olivia’s pencil pot over. ‘What’ve I got to smile about?’ Then she kicks off her
shoes, one of them skimming the fluffy hair on Imo’s still-frighteningly fragile head.
    ‘Watchit, young lady,’ I say. ‘I think you’d better cool off in your room for a bit.’
    ‘My room?’ she huffs. ‘That’s a joke. How can it be my room when I have to share it with Little Miss Duster?’
    ‘Who’s Little Miss Duster?’ asks Olivia, busy collecting up her scattered pencils and rearranging them in the pot. ‘Is she coming to stay as well?’
    ‘Never mind, Olivia,’ says Steve. ‘It’s just Rachel trying to be funny. You get on with your colouring.’
    Olivia gets back to her book, a present from Amanda for starting playgroup. Scenes from the Bible. I’m not sure of the scriptural accuracy of a purple and pink striped ark but at least
it’s keeping her amused. At least it’s not The Jeremy Kyle Show or QVC .
    Meanwhile, Rachel spies the cake. ‘Can I have a piece?’ she asks, tentative, mellowing.
    I know what Steve would say. Steve would say, ‘Stick to your guns and send her to her room. Now is not the time for cake.’ But I beat him to it, in a shiny-shoes moment.
‘Alright, but you’d better wash your hands. They look like they’ve been dipped in oil.’
    ‘Great,’ she says, which is such a positive word I want to hug her. But I have to catch her off-guard for a hug these days.
    ‘Do I get cake as well?’ Steve asks.
    ‘Of course,’ I smile sweetly before adding: ‘If you don’t mind putting on more weight.’
    He looks at me, looks at his stomach – the one that used to be taut and lean and lovely. ‘Best not then,’ he